Congratulate Mitch McConnell on Electing Doug Jones

Roy Moore did not lose Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race on substance. He lost the special election due to an over-the-top smear campaign from the Left and betrayal by his own party’s leadership. Let’s congratulate Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on electing yet another Democrat to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

Moore’s election should have been a slam-dunk. On paper, Moore made sense as the candidate most likely to win the Senate seat held previously by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore is a conservative Republican; he was an ardent law-and-order candidate who served 40 years as a judge; and he was a devout Christian and strongly pro-life.

But today’s Republican Party is renowned for its ability to kowtow to the Left. Whether they be rival Democrats or members of the media, the GOP is in a constant struggle to be perceived as legitimate or “normal” in order to combat the Leftist counter-narrative. Republicans care too much about what the Left thinks of them.

As a result and by default, the Republican candidate most likely to appeal to the Left will be the one that the GOPe and the media support. Roy Moore was not a milquetoast establishment candidate. He had eccentricities of behavior and temperament that would have made him an awkward companion to many of the elites in the Senate. But, more than that, he believed in preserving the middle class and upholding traditional values and, apparently, he was serious about it. It wasn’t just campaign rhetoric. That was unacceptable to the GOPe.

True, Moore did leave much to be desired. Even apart from the disturbing claims made against him, he came across as awkward in public. He certainly wasn’t afraid to pander in public either, as evidenced by that ridiculous display he put on by riding horseback to vote on election day (though I confess this reminded of George W. Bush’s idiotic “Mission Accomplished” stunt on the deck of an aircraft carrier when combat operations “ended” in Iraq in 2003). When defending himself from the relentless sexual allegations, he further undermined his case in a bizarre interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. From all insider accounts, Moore’s campaign management was an unmitigated disaster—especially compared to the disciplined campaign that his opponent, Doug Jones ran.

But Moore didn’t lose on policy grounds. And he didn’t lose because he was some frosty radical. On the contrary, Moore’s positions were supported by a majority of Alabamians (especially Republican voters in Alabama). Moore lost because of a shameless smear that preyed on the decent instincts of Alabama voters.

To compound difficulties for the Moore campaign, the Republican Party pulled its funding of the campaign at an absolutely critical juncture in the election (at the same time that the Democratic National Committee was pouring resources into the Jones campaign).

When Steve Bannon departed the White House, he vowed to go on the outside and fight for the Trump agenda. In a contentious interview with former “60 Minutes” reporter Charlie Rose (who resigned as a result of his own sex scandal just weeks ago), Bannon described how he was hemmed in working for the administration, and prevented from fully supporting the agenda Trump promised and voters made clear they wanted in 2016. In fact, during his interview with Rose, Bannon specifically named Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as one of the primary targets of his new crusade to defeat the stilted Republican establishment.

McConnell, clearly, won’t go without a fight.

When Moore unexpectedly defeated the vanilla Alabama Republican Establishment candidate, Luther Strange, McConnell and the GOP elite were put on notice. They threw everything they could at Moore. It was Mitch McConnell and the Republican elite who first put the media on to these unsubstantiated rumors about Roy Moore—just as it was the Republican Establishment that put the FBI and media onto the fictitious Trump-Russia “collusion” dossier in the summer of 2016. These Republican “leaders” will brook no compromise with their own base if it means empowering people who might threaten their little fiefdoms in Washington, D.C.

The entire Alabama special election was a case study in how the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party hates the average American. The GOPe understands that any Republican candidate will win Alabama when the senate seat is yet again up-for-grabs. But very few Republican candidates will actually fight to protect the middle class and against their donor interests as Moore would have done. This is the true reason they are happy to be rid of him. The GOPe is firmly in the hands of their corporate masters, which is why they fought so vociferously to get a Democrat elected in Alabama. This was about defeating you first, so that they can put their preferred Republican globalist candidate in office at the next election.

Doug Jones is a blip. The Democrats, aided and abetted by weak and sometimes malicious Republicans, played on well-meaning Alabama voters who are, naturally, sensitive about the name of their state being drug through the mud and morally repulsed by the nature of the allegations that were leveled against Moore.

Still don’t believe the bipartisan fusion party hates you? Listen to Doug Jones’ acceptance speech. While celebrating his victory last night, Jones made the dubious claim that his election represented a historical fork-in-the-road for Alabama. Finally, according to Jones, Alabama had taken the correct turn at this fork by electing him, because so often Alabamians had taken the wrong path. They can rest easy, I suppose, knowing that now they have Doug Jones there to tell them all about their wrong choices. Here we have an elected official describing the way in which the state that just elected him is an embarrassment to him. Why, we haven’t experienced a Democratic leader who hates his own population this much since . . . well, since the Obama Administration!

And what can the overwhelmingly Republican voters of Alabama expect? An ungodly assault on children, as Jones supports the most aggressive pro-abortion policies. They can also anticipate a complete stall in Trump’s governing agenda, as the Republican majority in the Senate is narrowed to just one seat. Alabama voters essentially will get two years of everything they’ve always disagreed with. But, hey you’ve squelched a sexual predator (or did you?)! Everyone should feel good about Doug Jones’ victory last night. Chuck Schumer certainly does. So, too, does the mainstream media. Hell, even Mitch McConnell is happy. If that doesn’t show you how dangerous the Establishment is, I don’t know what will.

Voting against Roy Moore didn’t buy Alabamians more time to get loose of the noose the elite are putting around their neck; it just gave the Establishment more time to tighten it.

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Brandon J. Weichert is a geopolitical analyst who manages The Weichert Report. He is a contributing editor at American Greatness and a contributor at The American Spectator . His writings on national security have appeared in Real Clear Politics and he has been featured on the BBC and CBS News. Brandon is an associate producer for "America First with Sebastian Gorka" and is a former congressional staffer who is currently working on his doctorate in international relations. You can follow him on Twitter at @WeTheBrandon.